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Seen through the window of a corporate office workplace, staff participate in a Zoom meeting in the City of London in 2021 in London, England. (Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images)
In Pictures via Getty Images
CEOs like to say they’re evidence-based—that they make decisions based on data.
If that’s really the case, they should look at a new study published last week by the prestigious journal Nature. Nick Bloom—a longtime researcher of remote work arrangements who may know more about the data on this topic than anyone (check out this summary of his monthly remote work research)—and his coauthors released one of the more definitive studies yet comparing hybrid and full-time in-office work.
You can read more about the details here, and how Bloom’s co-authors used a randomized, controlled trial at the China-based online travel firm Trip.com (people with odd-numbered birthdays got to work a hybrid schedule; those with even-numbered birth dates were in the office every day). The study found that the group with hybrid schedules had significantly lower turnover and higher job satisfaction. And despite all the hand-wringing over remote work productivity, the study did not find significant differences on performance reviews or promotion rates, even for up to two years after the start of the experiment.
The study doesn’t compare people who work remotely full-time, or employees who can make their own choices about when and how often they report to the office (though I’ve suggested that to Nick for future research!). But the study provides the kind of hard data CHROs and other talent leaders can present to CEOs who are resistant to offering people a few days of the week to work remotely. “Everyone’s heard of Nature,” Bloom told me. “Having a large, randomized controlled trial—they can still ignore it, but it gets a lot harder.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
LinkedIn announced new AI tools on Thursday for its premium job seekers which could help applicants’ résumés “stand out” to hiring managers. Among the new features, the tools pull data from a job seeker’s existing résumé and LinkedIn profile to suggest personalized changes that are tailored to each job description and suggest edits or rewrites of cover letters and résumés. The tools, however, are only available to those who pay for LinkedIn’s premium subscriptions, which range in price from $30 to $150 a month. Arguably, those who could benefit the most from standing out to recruiters are those who are unemployed and may not have funds available for such subscriptions.
HUMAN CAPITAL
Four male and four female former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit in California on Wednesday against the aerospace company and CEO Elon Musk over allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation, multiple outlets reported. One of the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in a statement the aerospace company’s management “knowingly permitted and fostered a work environment rife with sexual harassment.” Representatives for SpaceX did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment. The news followed reporting from the Wall Street Journal that Musk has allegedly made sexual advances toward female SpaceX employees. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, responded to the Journal with a statement that “Elon is one of the best humans I know” and the “untruths, mischaracterizations, and revisionist history in your email paint a completely misleading narrative.”
A Manhattan-based appeals court threw out a 2022 order on Wednesday requiring Amazon to hold back from firing pro-union employees, Forbes’ Cailey Gleeson reported. The three-judge panel in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the earlier decision did not sufficiently explain why the order was necessary. The prior order required Amazon to cease retaliation against pro-union employees, in response to the 2020 firing of an Amazon union organizer.
PRODUCTIVITY + REMOTE WORK
Bloomberg reported that Wells Fargo & Co. fired more than a dozen employees last month, discharging them “after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work,” according to disclosures filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Bloomberg reported that devices and software to imitate employee activity, sometimes known as “mouse movers” or “mouse jigglers,” took off during the pandemic’s work-from-home era, but that it’s unclear from the Finra disclosures whether the employees Wells Fargo fired were allegedly faking active work from home.
WHAT’S NEXT: LATTICE CEO SARAH FRANKLIN
Lattice CEO Sarah Franklin. Photo courtesy Lattice.
2017 SPENCER LOWELL, INC
The former Salesforce president and chief marketing officer became CEO of Lattice, the performance management software tool, when co-founder Jack Altman announced he would step into the executive chairman role last December. Forbes spoke with Franklin about how AI will impact performance reviews and the likelihood of having “digital” teammates. Excerpts from the interview below have been edited for length and clarity.
Forbes: What kinds of conversations are you having right now about AI?
Franklin: I was just in New York and I was meeting with a Fortune 100 CEO of a large financial company. Then I had to go get my Uber to go to the airport. The conversation that I had with the Uber driver were the same questions I was having with the CEO: ‘What is AI? What is going on? This is what I’m excited about [with AI], this is what I’m nervous about.’ Everyone is having this conversation: What does this mean?
Everything is pretty mind-bendy right now. It’s impacting everyone. The rate of change is so incredible because in three months of time … we’ve had like a full decade worth of innovation. A few months ago we were looking at the potential of an AI workforce, and now we’re saying the AI workforce is really here.
What do you mean by that?
This may be a pretty mind-bendy thing I’m about to say, but the org charts of the future are going to have AI in them. I don’t mean AI is going to help you show the org chart on the screen. I mean your fellow colleagues may be people workers or they may be digital workers. This is where Lattice [can help with managing digital workers]. We are here to help every company do this in a way which is responsible and transparent, and most importantly, hold companies accountable to doing this responsibly.
How do you “hire” an AI?
Exactly! That is the thing. How do I do this? And how do I do this responsibly? And how do I hold them accountable to goals?
I have no crystal ball. I cannot claim the future or what it will be. But this is where we’re going—we’re going to see CEOs saying, ‘I want to grow revenue without growing headcount, and AI is going to help me do that.’ For Lattice, I want us to help companies do that responsibly. You asked, how do I hire an AI employee? How do I report on what percentage of my workforce is [composed of digital workers]? We’re not used to these things. We now need to get into the world where: Do I want to work in a company that’s a 20% digital company? That’s an 80% digital company? What does this mean for jobs, wages, institutions, governments? These are big questions.
What kind of adoption rate are you seeing of AI coaches?
It’s huge. There’s so many use cases beyond just coaching as well. When you can talk to Lattice and not just ask questions that you’re embarrassed that you might not know, but ask for an opinion, ask for thought, be able to practice. Say you have a difficult conversation upcoming with an employee. You’re going to change structure or you’re going to change responsibilities. How do you have that conversation and practice it in a way that sets you up for success? You can talk to the AI and then it provides a transcript and it says, ‘here you did a good job of landing some factual information. Here you sounded like you were beating around the bush. Here you talked about something that wasn’t relevant.’ In the world of performance management and talent coaching and talent management, this is going to be a game changer.
At a big, 40,000-foot level, how do you think AI will change performance management? Will it happen more often? Will it become more accurate? What problem will AI solve?
At a macro level, I think it will become more ambient. … This is going to become more the norm. The way that you show up at work, and how you’re measured, will be more ambient in terms of better understanding of your contributions and your impact. That is going to be the big thing that happens, along with people working alongside AI.
FACTS + COMMENT
A new report from Lean In, the nonprofit group for advancing women in the workplace, examined the representation of Latinas in top corporate roles, finding just 5% of entry level jobs among the corporations studied were held by Latinas, despite being 9% of the overall population.
78%: The percentage decline in representation for Latinas between entry-level roles and the C-suite, the largest for any ethnic gender or gender group surveyed. The prevalence of white males, in comparison, increases 64% between starting jobs (where they hold 34.4% of roles) and the top layer of management (where nearly 56.4% identify as white men).
1%: The percentage of C-suite jobs that are held by Latinas, despite wanting promotions more than any other group, according to Lean In’s data.
“It has nothing to do with Latinas’ capabilities”—Lean In CEO Rachel Thomas
STRATEGIES + ADVICE
Here are 10 effective ways to show support for Pride month—even when your leadership says no.
Gen Z and millennial workers are opting out of the traditional corporate career ladder. Know what they’re prioritizing instead.
Want to acknowledge non-binary people in the workplace? Consider these ideas.
VIDEO
The Untapped Potential Of Hiring Former Startup Founders
QUIZ
In addition to approving CEO Elon Musk’s roughly $50 billion pay package, Tesla shareholders last week voted in favor of the company’s redomestication from Delaware to which state?
- Florida
- Texas
- South Carolina
- Nevada
Check to see if you got it right here.